International Schools : Keys to Understand the Education Market in China

You want to promote your international school in China ? This article is made for you.

Education, as all the markets could be an a big opportunity for your business, but you have to understand chineses needs and desires. Focus on the education market.

FIRST STEP : WHAT YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT CHINESE EDUCATION

Chinese education system is very particular. Children start their education at 6 years old. They do 6 years of primary school and after 3 years of junior middle school. After this 9 years, they can continue 3 years more of junior middle school to complete their education.

The chinese system education is the most reputated in the word. Lot of western countries want to inspired their system of the chinese education system. But, it’s also a system very competitive and challenging which meet some troubles :

Lot of work

Chinese students spend an avarage of eight hours and an half at school : from 7 :30am to 4pm with 2 hours of lunch break and naptime. But that’s not all… After class, they have tutoring class. It’s not oblige but better if you want your child to be the first. In addition, the school program is very heavy and it’s impossible for teachers to cover all the program published by the chinese government. That’s why most of the students have tutoring class in mathematics, literature, english, chemistry, and physics.

They also have a lot of homework to do. A student day in China starts at 6am and finishs at 10pm. During all the day, they work at school and after do their homework for the next day.

Beside, they have just 2 periods of holidays : 4 weeks off in winter and 7 weeks off in summer.

All this hours of work are effective or not ? Most of chinese students said that is really difficult. They don’t have time to do other activites such as sports, family or friend time, games, cinema or social activites.

Analyses show that chinese students are the best when it comes to theory but When it comes to application and experiments, western students are more efficient.

Finally, after 9 years of school such hard, lot of students drop out or quit shcool.

Success before all

Chinese students have to be good on all fields of study. In China, ranking is an obsession. You have to be the first, for your country and for your parents. Best students are congratulated, they have price and acknowledgement whereas, the students in difficulty are left out.

The achievement is really an obsession in China. Students learn more and more things but without understand anythings but with one only goal : be the first to make their parents proud.

A system without creativity

Chinese education system don’t encourage creativity. The program is so huge that teachers don’t encourage creativity or questions and chinese students have so much things to learn that they don’t try to be creatives, they just learn learn learn.

And, in fact, students are a bit submissive. They don’t want to ask question because it could shows their lack of knowledge. Most Chinese students are considered to be hard-working, persistent, and deep thinkers, whilst the Western education system is known for creating independent thinkers and good communicators.

So if you are an international school you can offer an international system to complete chinese qualifications with western values to success in the chineses market.

WHY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS HAVE A LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES ?

Two big reasons why international schools are today welcome in China :

The problems of the chinese education system : too much works make not accomplished boys and girls.

The increase of the middle class which is able to spend money for children education and know that learn english is today very important.

THE POWER OF INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

Chineses love western culture, they want to incorporate western values to their children. It’s your opportunity !

If we look at the UNESCO statistics, there are more than 700.000 chinese students arround the world.

Chinese students know that studies abroad is better for their resume than stay in China. Before, chinese students prefer the english speaking countries but today, countries like France, Japan, Italy, Germany are also appreciated.

That’s why you have an opportunity to promote your international school but be careful, today on this market you have also a lot of competitors.

Build your international school in China

You can also create your own international school in China. This international schools are not just appreciated by foreigners. Today, lot of chinese students go to international school, for the reasons explain above.

But, to build your school you have first to understand chinese culture and adapt your international school to your future consumers. You have to establishe links between your shcool and the government and the local representatives. However, be careful, China is a big country and you have lot of differents cultures and desires. You need to adapt you.

HOW CAN YOU PROMOTE YOUR SCHOOL?

Most than all the other consumers in the word, chinese people are very connected. Obviously you need to be present on their social media.

WECHAT

Wechat is the most popular chinese app. It’s a very complete app where you can chat, pay, look at the moments of brand or friends, consult and communicate with brands, do some shopping…

Chinese parents and their children spend a lot of time on wechat to find information. That’s why you have to create your own official account.

How to create a wechat official account ? Just look at our wechat official account guide.

Weibo

Weibo, the chinese Twitter is very popular. It’s better than Twitter because you can share a bigger content. So it’s better for you if you want to post a quality content. Chineses like quality content because they want a lot of information before choose a brand or not. Remember that.

In addition, chines student usually use Weibo to consult the page of potential schools.

Baidu

Obviously, you have to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on the best chinese search engine. To be promoted on baidu you need to create a webiste in mandarin. Because all key word seached on Baidu are in mandarin.

Besides, chinese consumers always want to find information about the school. Your website have to be very complete to appease your future consumers.

To promote your international school you need to contact specialist of the chinese market because they know chinese consumers and they can help you to grow fast.

We are a specialist e-commerce agency based in Shanghai, the economic heart of China’s modern miracle. We understand e-commerce and the real methods for success in this lucrative market.

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